Medieval in LA: A Fiction

This little book is a gem. Subtitled 'A Fiction', it isn't clear what is really fictionalized. Nothing actually happens here. The narrator, someone named Jim - like the author - leaves San Francisco - where the author lives - to visit friends in L.A. for the weekend. They see an art show, go to dinner, to a Hollywood party, sleep, have breakfast and then go to the beach. That is the sole action, but these prosaic occurances provide the pretext for the author's internal ruminations about the Age of Faith's transition into the Age of Reason. Jim sees himself as still a Medieval man (Jim Paul is described on the book jacket as a 'poet and medievalist')and his internal dialogue becomes a kalidescopic montage of events and arguments about what the modern world is and isn't, and his place in it. Berkeley, Hume, Augustine, William of Ockham, Gallileo, Bertolt Brecht, John Cage, MTV, modern cinema, the Bible, pop music, Chaos Theory, Newton, and numerous anecdotes from his personal expeience and that of his friends and those he meets, are all woven together into a minor but thoroughly satisfying meditation about human intention and life's meaning.An entertaining notion presented in the book is the concept of the 'suckhole . . . a stupid accident that winds up altering the future you had in mind.' I will add this to the Cosmic Joker as an explanatory principle to use as needed.On the whole, this book is a very pleasant and fun way to spend an afternoon, and provides enough grains of thought for the mind to grind on for days more.

I really did enjoy this book for the moments it gave me to look at the world and go "WOW," that is an odd way to come at reality! The author succeeds in suspending time for his reader and allowing us to live briefly in the possibility of many odd philosophies, such as the non-existence of silence, the all-encompassing nature of fate or alternately superstition, and not being able to read without speaking the words. For the images this book has left in my mind, I enjoyed it. However, I have to say that I did not really get some of the philosophical points, especially around marginalizing the possibility of God. And there were vast parts about his friends that I really just skipped over, looking for the philosophical gems.If I had friends that talked like this guy wrote, I wouldn't read a whole lot!